Thankless in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “So the security on the door magically shows you going in Thursday night—late, and not leaving again until Saturday night—suitcases in tow. And also magically never showed Joe entering or exiting the building.”

  “It can happen.”

  “Well, at least we can check with the super,” Peabody said doubtfully.

  “He’ll just lie.”

  “You know all about liars,” Eve said. “Just let me ask you one question. Just one that’s bugging me some. How’d you get the fake ID and the money to rent that swanky apartment?”

  “I … won some money in Vegas I didn’t tell the guys about. And I paid this guy I met at a bar for the ID.”

  “What guy, what bar, how much?”

  Eve rapped the questions out.

  “Some guy, I don’t know. Just a bar. Um, maybe a thousand dollars. About, um, five hundred dollars, I guess.”

  “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” Eve pushed forward, into his space, so he jerked back.

  “You lost your ass in Vegas. You didn’t just happen on an expert on fake IDs at some bar, and you sure as hell didn’t get one, with the accompanying database, for five hundred. You lying piece of shit. We’ve got the comps you stole from Ms. Farnsworth after you tortured her, after you killed her. The ones you had her droid take to a swap store. The data’s right on them.”

  “They were wiped. Wiped clean!” Wound up, he leaned toward her, shoved his face toward hers. “You’re the liar.”

  “How do you know they were wiped, Jerry?”

  “I …” Jerking back, he ran his tongue around his lips. “Just figured. Joe’s not stupid. He’d’ve wiped them first.”

  “You should’ve paid more attention to Ms. Farnsworth in Computer Science, Jerry. With the right techs, the right equipment—and believe me the NYPSD has both—you can retrieve damn near anything. Your ID was made on her comps.”

  “Okay, okay. I didn’t want to get her in trouble.”

  “She’s dead, Jerry.”

  “Her … reputation. She made the ID and stuff for me. I went to her, explained things, and she helped me out. That’s why Joe killed her. After I left.”

  “But she was dead when you left, Jerry, when you left carting your new duffel and her suitcase, and caught a cab to the clinic because she’d managed to break your foot.”

  “That wasn’t me. That was Joe. It was all Joe.” He began to cry, tears of terror and self-pity. “I didn’t do anything. Get off my back. I didn’t do anything.”

  “We’ve got witnesses. We tracked you, you stupid fuck. We know where you bought the hair color, the eye color, the bronzer.” She shoved to her feet again. “And these.” She began dropping sealed evidence on the table. “The tape, the rope, the knife. This saw you intended to use to cut Joe to pieces, these bags for disposal of body parts.”

  “I did not! I did not! The droid bought that stuff.”

  “Some of it, on your orders. Ms. Farnsworth’s droid. Then there’s this.”

  Eve lifted out the evidence bag holding the hank of Lori Nuccio’s hair. “How’d you get Lori’s hair, Jerry?”

  “She gave it to me. Like a love token thing.”

  “Really? How did she manage to do that when the person who hacked it off her before killing her took it? Had her hair colored just that afternoon, Jerry. This color.”

  “That’s … I got mixed up. You’re mixing me up. Joe had that with him. He brought it with him. He showed it to me to prove he killed Lori.”

  “You killed Lori, and got off doing it. You left the boxers you had on in her bathroom, you fuckhead.”

  “Joe planted those. He told me.”

  Eve sat back. “Not going to fly, Jerry. Not even going to get off the ground. On top of everything else, Ms. Farnsworth left a deathbed statement, too, right on her computer. Coded it in right under your idiot nose while you had her terrorized. Your name, Jerry, and everything we need to wrap you up.”

  “That’s a lie! She did not.”

  “She really did, Jerry.” Peabody spoke quietly, pushing what sympathy she could into her tone. “It’s all right there.”

  “She did that to get back at me, that’s all. She always had it in for me.”

  “Then why did she make you the ID? Why did she help you out?”

  “I … you’re confusing me. You’re mixing me up on purpose. I want a lawyer. I want a lawyer, and I’m not talking to you.”

  “That’s your right.” Eve began to box up the evidence again. “Peabody, have him taken back to holding.”

  “I am not going back there.” Shouting, he gripped the edge of the table as if to secure himself in place. “I want a lawyer now. I’ve got plenty of money. I can hire the best lawyer there is, and he’ll make you sorry.”

  “You don’t have any money, Jerry,” Eve corrected.

  “I have millions!”

  She sighed. “Jerry, Jerry, you moron. The money was stolen in the commission of various crimes. None of it’s yours.”

  “Everything my parents had is mine. That’s the law.”

  “Not if you killed them.”

  “She’s right about that, Jerry. You can’t use any of that money.” Peabody rose, too. “I’ll notify the Public Defender’s office. With the holiday, though, it could be Monday before they assign anyone.”

  “I’m not waiting until Monday.”

  “If you want a lawyer.” Eve shrugged. “It could take a while to get you a PD.”

  “I want one now!” His eyes went wild, spittle flew. “I want to use my money to hire a lawyer, you bitch.”

  “Tough shit, Jerry. We’ll work on getting you a public defender, as is your right.”

  “Don’t you walk out of here! You come back here, you stupid bitch. You come back here right now.”

  “You’ve exercised your right, requested a lawyer. This interview is done until you are represented. Get the door, will you, Peabody?”

  “Fuck a bunch of lawyers. I don’t want a lawyer. I want you to get back here. I want to go home.”

  Calm as a lake on the outside, Eve turned back to him. “You’re waiving your right to representation at this time?”

  “Fuck you, yes. I’m telling you, Joe killed all of them, and you’re trying to pin it on me. You’re just pissed because I was smarter than you.”

  “Oh yeah, I can promise if you were smarter than me, I’d be pissed.” Eve set down the box, sat again. “Here’s another little”—what had Roarke called it?—“spanner in the works. Joe’s alibied for the time of your mother’s death, the time of your father’s death, your ex’s death, and Ms. Farnsworth’s death. Do you think we don’t check these things, Jerry?”

  “He’s lying. You’re lying. I want another cop.”

  “That’s not one of your rights. You killed them, Jerry, every one of them. You liked it. You found what you were missing in life, didn’t you? And you got rich doing it, you got everything you ever wanted, everything you deserved. All those assholes screwing with you? You got them back for it. And you were good at it. You fucking excelled.”

  “You’re damn right!”

  “It came to you when you were sticking that knife in your mother, didn’t it?”

  Eve kept her eyes trained on his, kept her tone quiet and smooth. Praise and threaten, she thought. Juggle both the praise, the threats, and toss in the facts.

  “She’s bugging the shit out of you. Get a job, get out, get off your ass. Nagging bitch, you’d had enough. Who wouldn’t? So you picked up the knife, right there in the kitchen where she was making you a sandwich, and you carved her up. And you knew, right then, you’d found your calling.”

  “She wouldn’t get off my back. They were going to kick me out. Just kick me out. What was I supposed to do?”

  Get a job, Eve thought. “So you killed them. Your mother with the knife. And you waited until your father came home from work and you beat him to death with your old baseball bat.”

  “It was self-defense. I had to protect myself
, didn’t I? They made me crazy. It’s their fault. I did what I had to do to protect myself.”

  “What you had to do,” Eve said with a nod. “Then you took their money, their valuables. You stayed in the apartment with their bodies from Friday night until Saturday night.”

  “I couldn’t stay there forever, could I?”

  “Right. Of course. But you needed some time to do the whole transfer with the accounts, find all the money they had, open your own accounts, wire the money out and over using their passcodes.”

  “My money,” he reminded her. “My parents, my inheritance. They owed me.”

  “It was pretty smart,” Peabody said, and worked some admiration into her tone. “I mean, the way you transferred the money, then withdrew it so fast on Monday, spent some time in that nice hotel figuring out your next move.”

  “People underestimate me. That’s their problem. I figured it out, and I did everything right. You had my name and face all over the screen, but you couldn’t find me. I’ve got skills.”

  “And you used those skills on Lori Monday night.”

  “That bitch didn’t respect me. Another nag, nag, nag. She humiliated me, so I humiliated her right back. She deserved it.”

  “Stripped her, cut her hair,” Eve said. “Tore up her new stuff. You got off when you strangled her, didn’t you, Jerry? They’re powerful, those skills of yours. You found your power.”

  “Best I ever had, and I did it myself. She deserved what she got. It was self-defense,” he repeated, jabbing a finger on the table. “All of it. I had to look out for myself. It’s my right.”

  “How was Ms. Farnsworth self-defense?” Eve wondered.

  “She ruined my life. Screwed with my grades so it looked like I flunked, and I had to lose a whole summer making it up. My own friends made fun of me. I made her give me my life back, that’s all. Made her give me a new life. That’s fair.”

  “You assaulted her, bound her with rope and tape, forced her to generate your new data and identification, credit cards, to transfer her funds, her property into accounts for you.”

  “She owed me. They all owed me. They all thought I was nothing. I made them nothing. It’s fair,” he repeated. “I’ve got a right to look out for myself.”

  Eve glanced at Peabody.

  “Let me just make sure we get this all straight, Jerry,” Peabody said. “You killed your mother, your father, Lori Nuccio, and Ms. Edie Farnsworth, you abducted, assaulted, tortured, and planned to kill Joe Klein because they owed you—having played parts in ruining your life. So taking their lives was fair. Taking their money and their property was fair.”

  “That’s right. That’s exactly right.” Pleased with the summation, he gave Peabody a sharp nod. “They all screwed with me, so I screwed with them bigger. Did you see my apartment? That’s who I am now. And I know damn well it’s going to turn out you’re wrong about the money. It’s mine. It’s in my name, my accounts. Possession’s more than half of something. I heard that somewhere. The money’s in my possession, so you’d better get me a damn good lawyer in here, now, or I’m going to sue your asses. It was self-defense, and I’m not going back in that cell. You can’t make me.”

  He actually folded his arms over his chest, jutted out his chin. Like a kid making a dare.

  “Oh, Jerry, Jerry, I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am to disabuse you.” Eve allowed herself a single happy sigh, and a big, wide smile. “How my heart actually sings with gratitude for this moment. You’re going down for murder, you asshole. One count second degree, three first degree, one of assault with intent, plus all the related charges. You’re not just going back in that cell, Jerry. You’re going to live the rest of your small, stupid, miserable life in a cage.”

  “I will not! I’m not going to jail.”

  She let him spring up, let him run for the door—and just shot her foot out to trip him. And yeah, there was a little heart singing when he did a sliding face plant.

  “No, you’re not going to jail,” she agreed, stirring herself to slap restraints on him as he cried big, self-pitying tears and sobbed for his money. “It’s called prison. And I’m betting it’s going to be a nasty, bust-your-ass prison, off-planet, where they eat weaseling little cowards like you for lunch.”

  “I’ll take him down to Booking,” Peabody said as she helped Eve haul Reinhold to his feet.

  “Nah. We’re passing him off to a couple unlucky uniforms. We’re going to go have ourselves a nice turkey dinner.”

  “Yay!”

  Together, they dragged the limp, sobbing Reinhold out of the box, and into the rest of his life.

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Piatkus

  ISBN: 978-1-4055-2299-1

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain,

  are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Nora Roberts

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

  system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in

  writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the

  publisher.

  Piatkus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  EPILOGUE

  THERE WAS SOME PAPERWORK TO DEAL WITH, SOME CONTacts to make—procedure was procedure—but Eve figured they pulled up at the house at a reasonable time.

  She hadn’t screwed up Thanksgiving.

  “Champagne,” Roarke decreed. “For both of you. Exceptional teamwork in Interview.”

  “Champagne?” Peabody did a seat dance before climbing out. “Oh boy, oh boy!”

  “It’s a good day,” Eve decided. And she could wait for the next to talk to Asshole Joe in the hospital.

  She stepped into the house, into a wall of voices, music, into the scents of applewood burning, candles flickering, flowers, and food.

  Into, she supposed, family.

  They’d spread around the living room, and had broken out musical instruments. Some of them danced—including, she saw with considerable shock, the huge Crack, the sex club owner—with his tattoos and feathers. The Irish white skin of the little girl he had on his hip glowed against his ebony.

  Mavis’s little Bella clung to McNab’s hands and stomped her feet in a mimic of the step-dancing going on.

  They called it a ceili, she remembered from her visit to the family farm in Clare. And she supposed they’d brought a little Irish to an American holiday.

  It fit just fine.

  Before she could evade—or even think to—one of them (uncle—no cousin) whizzed by, snatching her, swinging her into the whirl of it.

  She managed a “No, uh-uh,” but he just plucked her off her feet, spun her in circles.

  She laughed, then staggered a bit when he dropped her back down, and the music ended with riotous applause.

  The noise didn’t end. A million questions and comments burst out, and made her think of a media conference.

  “Easy now,” Sinead ordered. “You’re all smothering the lot of them. Ian tells us you got your man,” she added. “And all’s well with the world.”

  “For now.”

  “Now is good and fine enough. We’ve been entertaining ourselves as you see, until you were home again.”

  “Don’t let that stop you.” She took the glass of champagne Roarke handed her. “That was quick.”

  “It was already out and open.”

  Nadine walked over, gave Eve a hard, completely unexpected hug. “I love them,” she murmured in Eve’s ear. “I love them all, and want to marry them.”

  “How mu
ch have you had to drink?”

  “Just the right amount. God, they’re so much fun! You’re a lucky woman, Dallas.”

  “I’m feeling pretty lucky.”

  “I’m having the best time.” Easing back, Nadine plucked up her glass of champagne, lifted it in toast. “And I’m getting an exclusive with you and Roarke together, on Now.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Oh, but I am.” Fun and affection danced in Nadine’s crafty green eyes. “I’m going to get you drunk enough to agree before we have the pie.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I’m feeling pretty lucky, too. Oh, Morris is going to play the sax. I want to marry him when he plays the sax.”

  One of the uncles sang with the wrenching melody, and half the room shed tears. Eve thought they liked it.

  Mavis bounced up to give her a squeeze, then Charles. Everybody seemed to need to hug.

  “I got that name and contact for you,” Charles told her. “It turns out you didn’t need it.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t.”

  She started to step back. She really needed to take her weapon harness off, secure it upstairs. But she glanced down to see Sean and Nixie staring up at her.

  “What?”

  “You got the bad guy,” Sean stated.

  “Yeah, we got him.”

  “Did you zap him a good one first?”

  Violent little bugger, she thought. She liked that about him. “No. I just knocked him down. Twice.”

  “That’s something then.”

  “He killed people,” Nixie said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Now he won’t anymore.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  She nodded, smiled. “I have your surprise.”

  “Yeah? Hand it over.”

  She ran to Elizabeth, got a slim rectangle wrapped in gold paper.

  Gifts were always weird to her, so Eve ripped the paper off—like a bandage from a wound—to get it done fast. And looked down at a framed drawing of herself.

  She stood, eyes hard, weapon drawn, coat billowing. A little reminiscent, she thought, of an illustration in one of Roarke’s classic graphic novels—and just as frosty.